The Curve
by whipplefilter
Summary: Summary for Chapter 9: Run for your life.
1. Chapter 1

BOB CUTLASS: Look, none of you need to be told that Dinoco's been the golden brand of racing almost as long as the sport's been around. But with their recent merge with Rust-eze, we've been getting something a little different.

DARRELL CARTRIP: Bob, you say that like it's a bad thing! Dinoco's known for quality racing, but this is a fast game with fast changes -just last year we saw the whole field go nuclear when the Next-Gens rolled off the line. For Dinoco to stay on top, they need something a little different, and I say Ms. Ramirez is just what the pit crew ordered!

CUTLASS: She's got a good set of tires on her, no doubt. But as we head into the second half of the season No. 51's racked up how many penalties already? Unsecured lugnuts, speeding on pit road, illegal lane changes - those aren't the kinds of records you wanna be setting. And she's reckless - if Ryan Laney weren't the A-grade talent that he is, he could've sent Swervez into the wall after that stunt she pulled getting in between 'em last week. She's just not -

* * *

"-used to racing with other cars. She doesn't see them; I don't know," Lightning tries to explain.

"Lightning, I'm gonna tell you once," Tex says placidly. "It's your job to know. It's your job to make sure _she_ knows. I know we're bucking convention here, and I know there's gonna be growing pains. But I want to keep the track safe as we can - you know better'n me there's enough risk in racing as it is. We don't need more."

Lightning's gaze is glued to the floor. "Yeah, I know. I- I'm sorry, Mr. Tex. I'll- We'll- We'll figure it out."

"Don't just say it. Do it," says Tex. His laidback demeanor never wavers, but he means business, and Lightning knows it. "You know I like you. I'm going with my gut, here, and not the numbers. Show me that wasn't my mistake. You hear?"

Lightning flashes his signature grin. "You bet, Mr. Tex!"

Once outside, his grin dribbles into the pavement.

He takes a deep breath.

200 yards, and he's face to face with Mack.

Mack shouts, "Hey boss!" And then, quieter, "Hey, you look blue."

Deep breath.

Signature grin.

"Right back atcha!" Lightning replies, overloud. " _Dinoco blue_ looks good on you, Mack. Good thing, too, because I hear you're haulin' R," Lightning shouts emphatically, in the direction of Mack's rear.

When Cruz doesn't materialize, Lightning turns back to Mack. Mack shrugs helplessly.

Lightning progresses toward the mouth of Cruz's trailer. "Cruz! Are you in there? 'Cause rumor has it a certain someone led thirty whole laaa~ps today - "

"You can stop," says Cruz. She's quiet, pulled way to the back of the trailer, her front bumper just visible in the glow of the computer screen. The Racing Sports Network emanates tinny from the trailer's speakers.

 _Oh no_ , thinks Lightning.

"Cruz, bad idea. We talked about this. You can't let them get to you. I mean, those guys are great, but sometimes they just gotta stay stuff for the TV ratings, y'know? It's part of the game. So it's not personal if they - "

* * *

CUTLASS: You're right, though, Darrell. We should cut her some slack. She's an 11th-hour rookie with a 12th-hour crew chief. McQueen's a legend, always will be - but a legend does not a crew chief make. What's costing Dinoco their consistency this season is simple: It's amateur hour over there. There's just not enough experience in the deck. What's happening out there - it's like watching loose cannons on a speedway.

CARTRIP: And that's not real racing. You got me there, Bob. You got me there.


	2. Chapter 2

"Good race today," Sally greets him. She's grainy and the latency makes it look like half of her's still on the other side of the room, but Lightning can tell she's at the Cone. Bedroom, not front desk.

"You watched?" Lightning asks.

"Oh, every inning. When Cruz scored that field goal, I went wild. And then the three-pointer? Wow!"

"Ha ha."

"Of course I watched. Come on. There's a bye week coming up, right? You thinking of swinging by at all?"

"Yes!" Lightning answers immediately. Just as quickly, however, his enthusiasm fades. "Well, I mean. I don't know. We're still - working out some kinks, and we got a 35-point penalty today for something stupid, and - and I think Tex is mad, and - "

"You sound like you need a break. You know, take some time to hit reset."

Lightning sighs. "We ineed/i to figure this out. I just - I don't know why everything feels so complicated. I've only been doing this for, oh, ten years, so you'd think I'd know how to - "

"You've been doing this for six months," Sally reminds him. "You're new. Cruz is new. Of course it's going to feel weird. Did you spring off the manufacturing line knowing how to drive?"

"After six whole months? Yes!"

Sally shakes her head. Or maybe that's what she does - in any case, she becomes a blur of lagging pixels. "Well, do you have a game plan? 'Cause you know, if you're gonna end up in Thunder Hollow again, I should probably start drafting a liability waiver or something."

Game plan, Lightning thinks. He's not sure. Make sure the Dinoco team is at least half as versed in lugnuts as Guido is? Calmly remind Cruz that there are forty-two other cars on the track, and you can't drive like a bat out of hell? Remind her that generally speaking, she's inot/i racing the pace car?

"Can I fire her pit crew?" Lightning mutters.

"Historically, how's that worked for you?" Sally volleys back.

"Can I fire her crew chief?"

Sally opens her mouth, but no words come out. She lets the silence spill between them.

"Are you okay?" she asks eventually.

And what's he supposed to say? That he thought this was going to be easier? That in the heat of that first race, down in Daytona, it had all felt so right, so smooth, so real, and he'd finally felt like the pieces were falling into place and he knew what he was doing - what he'd ibe/i doing, where he was headed, what the future was gonna hold? That it had felt that easy? Like it was going to be that easy, because it was right, he was right, and all this wasn't a huge mistake?

"I don't know how to answer that," Lightning replies instead.

"Ah, the 'it depends.' Classic. Well-trod. Very legally defensible," says Sally. Then her expression softens. "Hey. I was thinking of going over to Flo's for a sip. If you want I can bring the iPad with me, light a candle. We could have a nice, romantic, thousand-mile-away dinner, help you figure out that answer."

Lightning smiles wistfully. "That sounds amazing, Sal. But I promised Tex I'd talk to Cruz about - you know. And I wanna do it before we hit the training center tomorrow, so we can start the day fresh."

"See, you do have a gameplan. You got this," says Sally. "Dinner sometime this month, though? We missed last month. And the month before that."

Lightning winces, and Sally's signal must be a lot better than his is, because she definitely catches the movement.

"I, uh - " Sall backpedals. "That wasn't supposed to be passive aggressive. Trust me, you'll know when I'm being passive aggressive. I just meant that I miss you. You know?"

"I know that I love you," Lightning offers. "I'll call you tomorrow morning - breakfast date?"

* * *

Lightning oversleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

Lightning oversleeps. The last thing he remembers is sunrise and _her last forty laps, shoulda added wedge_. When he wakes, the TV's hissing static and the sun is bright. 15 races and too many hours of footage later, all he's learned is what Tex already told him: His mistakes.

Lightning shambles his way to the track in a series of frenetic, bleary-eyed wrong turns, feeling stupid because with the exception of, uh, several very important races, he's never late to anything, ever - and yet here he is, the world's least professional crew chief ever, because from the first day his tires hit pavement the one thing he's always known is that _you absolutely cannot be late for a 5:30 track appointment._ And yet, and yet -

Cruz isn't there.

His gaze flicks up to the track clock, and it's barely seven. He's not _that_ late. They have the track until nine. And if there's one thing Lightning's absolutely certain Cruz is capable of doing on her own, it's run a training session.

Exhaustion simmers into anger, which Lightning then tries to pull back into self-restraint, because being angry with Cruz has never solved anything, and it's too early in the morning for this. But self-restraint topples into self-loathing topples into resentment, and bottom line? Cruz should be here, with or without him. She knows that. They discussed that. And if she's not going to listen, then Lightning's not sure what the point is.

This isn't traffic school. This is racing - real racing.

That's _your job, McQueen_ , Lightning tells himself. _Get her ready for her first road course at OKC. That's all._

He's not her alarm clock cum stopwatch. That's on her.

"Cruz!" Lightning shouts experimentally, and gets only his echo in return.

He reverses back into the center and stalks the halls. Wind tunnel - nope. VR - definitely not. Simulator, no. And then - of course, treadmills. There she is.

Of course.

"Hey, Lightning! Long time no see!"

Lightning jumps, and suddenly Cal is cruising beside him, talking about Dinoco this, Mr. Tex asked him to come by and stop something by legal that, talk to the trainees, blah blah blah, et cetera.

"I've missed - "

"Not right now, Cal." Lightning zips past him, without taking his gaze from his truant yellow friend in the distance.

"So it works better if you - " Cruz is explaining to a lime-green Fiesta Lightning doesn't recognize. She's sporting a Dinoco Training Center logo on her side panel, though, so he can only assume she's the new Cruz.

"Cruz! What are you doing in here? And why aren't you dressed? Where are your racing tires?"

Cruz turns away from the Fiesta. "Mr. McQueen! There you are! You didn't show up this morning!"

"Where are your racing tires?" Lightning repeats. "Why aren't you - "

"Well, I went to the garage, but they said you didn't put in the order - "

"Order - ?!"

"And then they said you needed to sign off on it - "

"What - "

" - And something about keeping track of inventory - "

"I think it's obvious who you are. I don't see why they couldn't have just given you the tires," Lightning snaps. Because somehow this is also his fault.

Cruz shrugs. "That's what I said. But they really just wanted to talk to you. But then you didn't show, and I didn't know where you were, so - "

" - So you figured you'd take the morning off?"

"So anyway, Lesly, like I was saying: The treadmills aren't some recreational spin class in Malibu. You have to tailor each experience to the racer. Which is actually my favorite part about - "

"Cruz! Stop telling her how to do her job!" Lightning interjects.

"But what she's doing would be so much more helpful if - "

"That's not your problem any more! It's hers! Focus! Because right now, you have 99 problems and all she's got is the one. _You._ "

Cruz reverses abruptly. "Wow, Mr. McQueen. You don't get to call me that."

Lightning feels like the entire Center has its eyes on him. Lesly the Trainer looks like she wants to set both him and Cruz on fire. Cal apparently followed him here, is still hanging around. The speed of each and every treadmill regresses to zero and the room goes still and quiet.

"Call you… what?" Lightning ventures.

"It's a song, bro," says one of the rookie racers - the bug guy.

"What's a song?" asks Lightning, still bewildered.

"Oh, I know that song!" offers Cal. "By Jag-Z."

Lightning just stares at him.

"Jaguar… Z-Type? Jag-Z?" Cal continues.

Lightning closes his eyes and squeaks his tires against the polished floor. He counts to three. "Okay, look. I'm sorry. I'm sleep-deprived. I have no idea what you're talking about. Lesly, nice to meet you. And nice to see you again, uh - you three. And Cruz! Good morning/fine, thanks/and you?/glad to hear it. Now can we let Lesly do her job, figure out this tire situation, and try to get back on track here?"

Finally, Lightning turns to Cal. "Cal, I'm sorry, it's great to see you, too."

"No problem, Lightning," Cal says brightly. "I can help with the tire thing. If you set up a recurring appointment in the system - "

"Okay, great. Let's roll."

* * *

"Mr. McQueen, what drill are we running right now?" Cruz asks, about forty laps in. "Because OKC is a road course, isn't it? And you wanted" - she's loose on the turn - "to go over multiple-corners - "

In the next turn, they both go high, and Lightning can feel the force of her, mere inches away. Radiant energy cutting through wind and that shoots out in a gale behind them.

"This is just a short track, so I don't really see how this - "

"It's the drill where we drive," Lightning answers.

It's the drill where they drive, let the asphalt bubble up under the heat of their speed. Let it claim rubber. Where they find the groove, stick tires to pavement even as their wheels spin faster, faster, faster. Where the centrifugal force around the corners bears down and you bite right back, and the track beneath you changes like a wild thing and each lap is never quite the same but one comes always, always after the next until you're not thinking about anything but the turn in front of you because nothing else matters.

It's the drill where you let everything fall away, you throw it away, and it's just you and the track and nothing else matters.


	4. Chapter 4

Lightning's pretty sure he's got it narrowed down: The look Cruz keeps shooting him is "thinly veiled disappointment worn by someone wholly unused to feeling this way."

 _Oh_ great _work, Lightning,_ he tells himself. His one job was to teach Cruz something new, and all he'd managed was disappointment. Granted, it was an artfully specific type of disappointment, so maybe there were bonus points for that. He hopes so, because he's gonna need them.

"How was that?" Cruz pants, as she rounds back into the pit, where Lightning is waiting.

"Over the line. We're talking a one-lap penalty here, Cruz - you gotta nail this, okay?"

"I'll be more careful."

"Don't be careful; just find the reflex. You don't have time to wander down pit road, thinking about your speed or focusing on how you're gonna park in the box! You need to just _do_ it."

"It's one thing to say that," Cruz allows. "But how do I - "

"By doing it again!" Lightning snaps. "Over and over, until you can do it in your sleep. Until this is so deep in your wheel bearings you physically can't do it any other way. Cruz, you know this stuff. I'm sure you've told it to a dozen other racers. Isn't that your job?"

" _When_ I was a trainer," Cruz enunciates, "this was _not_ my job. Because this is a rule, not a skill. You can't just train rules like that! Don't you know the difference? You can motivate yourself to push harder, but you can't really get fired up about parking in a square."

Lightning doesn't see the distinction, and he's not in the mood to ask. "Well, you have to. That's the sport," he says. "If you can get fired up about tires, you can get fired up about your pit box. Name it if you have to; I don't care."

Cruz raises her eyebrows. "Are you making fun of me?"

"None of this is fun," Lightning mutters under his breath. Never in his life has he been bored on a racetrack before today.

It's not a good feeling.

"You know what, let's take a break. We're overtime anyway." Lightning motions toward the green blur already running laps around the track, closing them in. "We'll come back to this once this guy's done."

Cruz nods. And there's that look again: Thinly veiled disappointment. Maybe she's as bored as he is. Maybe it's clear to her now that Lightning has no magic to impart. She opens her mouth, then closes it again.

Then she says, "Hey, Mr. McQueen? I know this is important, and I promise I'm gonna get fired up about Ernesto - " who must be the pit box, Lightning gathers - "but what about the road course? How are we going to prep for the actual race?"

"Just do your best," Lightning replies. It's supposed to be encouraging, but she gives him that Look again.

"Okay, I'll look through the footage. I'll think of something," Lightning promises, though the idea of combing through any more race footage makes him want to short his battery. Then he has an epiphany. "Actually, Cruz, this is perfect. I know of a great road course you can practice on. Radiator Springs has this - "

"Uh, one more thing," Cruz interjects.

It's genuinely perfect. If there's magic anywhere, Lightning figures it's back home - and there's a course through Ornament Valley that's probably wilder than anything OKC could throw at Cruz. Lightning thinks back to their moonshine run, back with Smokey and the rest of Doc's old gang, and yeah - Ornament Valley could give them some of that. And that - Lightning feels it at his core - that was magic. That's their key. And if all this also happens to get him back home, then that's an added bonus. Plus - and Mack's only reminded him of this like thirty thousand times - Mack has some kind of truck family reunion thing in Wisconsin this week. He could drop them off on his way out. He could probably even stay in Wisconsin an extra day, since he'd only need to loop back to Radiator Springs, and could skip the extra haul all the way down to LA.

It's perfect.

Cruz sucks on her lip, teeth scraping metal nervously. "I was thinking - I was hoping I could go see my family. It's just - it's been a while, you know? I haven't seen them since I got signed up to help train you, and then we were in Radiator Springs, and now we've just been on the road all the time - "

Oh no. Nonononononono. Not when he'd just figured out a magic plan. Not now that he's figured out how to get out of this ridiculous training center and get back home.

"We are not going to Texas."

"What's wrong with Texas? I'm from Texas!" Cruz blurts out.

Lightning glowers. "I _know_. That's why I said - You know what, never mind. I don't care if you're from Texas; I'm from Texas, too. We're still not going there."

"Really? What part?"

"What? Oh. Dallas. It doesn't matter - "

"Well, that doesn't count!"

"Why wouldn't Dallas count?!"

Cruz purses her lips. "It's just so - _north_."

Lightning stares at her blankly. "What?"

"It doesn't matter," Cruz reminds him. "Because I didn't say I wanted to go to Texas. I said I wanted to go home. My family's in LA now. Or did you think I lived at the training center?"

"I didn't… really think about where you lived," Lightning confesses.

But Cruz doesn't miss a beat. "We have a bye week, right? Which buys us some time. I'm just asking for one afternoon. Just one."

Lightning bites his lip. "Well, we're really supposed to - I was thinking maybe we could go back to - "

"Mr. McQueen," Cruz says, very seriously. "The training center's right here. My family's right here. In town. And I just wanna say hello. I promise you, I'll pit perfectly 100 times in a row tonight!"

If Lightning's being honest, it's difficult to resist when Cruz gives him that face. For once, it's not that Look.

But if they're going to Radiator Springs, they'd need to go now. He knows - because he was told, thirty thousand times - Mack's supposed to be at his family reunion in Wisconsin by tomorrow afternoon, so either they get on the road with him now or they don't get on at all. And if they don't get on at all, that means they spend the week in LA, and Mack comes back just in time for their nonstop to Oklahoma City. On their way to OKC, they bypass Radiator Springs on I-40.

They bypass Radiator Springs on I-40.

"Mr. McQueen," Cruz repeats. "Please?"

"Make it 150," Lightning relents.

He kisses home goodbye.

* * *

He should be back at the Center, pouring over the race footage. Attempting math he doesn't know how to do. Designing some kind of crazed master plan that'll make whatever magic happened in Daytona happen again. And again and again and again.

 _What's costing Dinoco their consistency this season is simple: It's amateur hour over there._

He ends up on a pier in Santa Monica, at the end of the Mother Road. He stares out at the ocean and wonders if he shouldn't just turn around and drive until he hits home. Forget promises. Forget bye weeks. Maybe it's time to disappear for fifty years.

"Sir, do you have a permit?"

"A whuh - " Stirred from his moping, Lightning blinks up at an SUV in police blue.

"An emissions permit. From the sound of you, you're not running a low-emission engine. If you're not street legal, you're going to have to go down to city hall and apply for a permit."

"You gotta be kidding me."

"Well, sir, this is Los Angeles. We have rules. As a visitor, you'll only be allowed to emit a certain poundage of carbon during your stay here. For the environment's sake, you understand."

Which is the last straw. This city is stupid; this whole plan was stupid.

"I don't even want to be here," Lightning points out petulantly, as though this fact should make any kind of difference. He feels like it should. At some point, in some reality, the fact that he does not want to be here - that he does not want _this_ \- should factor into something.

"And yet here you are," replies the officer, unfazed.


	5. Chapter 5

Lightning's back in his garage at the Center when the phone rings. Before answering, he backs up to the mirror and makes one last attempt to catch a glimpse of his brand-new, municipally-issued carbon counter. It's no use, though; all he can see is a faint ring of light when, every so often, it blinks. He's half-convinced it's not a carbon counter at all, but a car bomb. But maybe there's no difference.

He was supposed to call Sally this morning.

He was supposed to call Sally, and he forgot.

"SallyI'msosorry, I overslept, I totally - "

"Did you just wake up? It's 6PM! I've been calling you all day. Where have you been?"

"Busy! Working! Where do you think I've been? Racecars don't have phones."

"Well, you're not a racecar."

" - Right now," Sally amends quickly, though not quickly enough. "I just meant that there's a thousand cars in LA who'd be happy to install a burner in you. Just while you're, you know. Out and about, and not on the track. It came out wrong. I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry," says Lightning. "I overslept, and then I got distracted, and then this police car - "

"Police car?" Sally interjects.

"Everything's fine," Lightning assures her. "There's just this - emissions law. Thing. Carbon counter. I'm not really sure - "

"Oh, so they did go through with that. Back in the day, I remember reading some position papers on that. It bounced around the courts for a while but I wasn't sure it'd actually go anywhere. 'Cause, you know. Tourism. Plus not everyone's a hybrid. So some of the grassroots firms, they were concerned it could be used in a discriminatory fashion, because you put a Prius and an Oldsmobile next to each other, and - You don't actually want to hear about this, do you."

"No, I do," Lightning insists. "Sally, I really do."

"Nah," says Sally. "I have better news. I talked to my boss today - "

Lightning arches an eyebrow.

" - and you know, she's kind of a stick in the mud, considering how long we've known each other. But finally she said that I could have the week off to go visit my fancy boyfriend in LA so long as I could find someone to cover me. And Mater volunteered, so - "

"WHAT!" Lightning exclaims. It's an explosive kind of glee.

Sally laughs. "I'm actually on I-40 as we speak! Traffic is terrible, Route 66 is superior, yadda yadda. But you know, sometimes you wanna make great time, and have a great time later."

"Sal, you don't have to," Lightning backpedals quickly. He says something about the Cone, and the town, and "like five hundred miles one way," but honestly, he's not listening to himself either.

"I'm sorry, did I say I was coming for you? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I said 'my fancy boyfriend in LA.' I might be able to squeeze you in if you're that desperate."

"I'm really excited to see you," says Lightning. "I mean, I thought - "

"Well, good. Because I really want to see you, too. And then I thought, wait. Why am I just waiting around? I have wheels, don't I? So then I - "

With the ease of much practice, they fall into the jazz rhythm of their conversations, bouncing randomly from yesterday's news to 'that one thing you mentioned three weeks ago' to rogue observations about the immediate present, on either end of the line.

Mostly, they sit on either end of the connection, quietly existing together.

Sally drives, and Lightning flips idly through race footage. Every so often he remembers he's supposed to be paying attention. It's hard, though. Lightning's never been terribly keen on watching his own races, even under the best of circumstances. After all, he was there. He doesn't need to know where he's been - just what's coming next.

Not that what's coming next is an exhilarating prospect at the moment. If there's one thing he hates, it's not knowing the next time he'll be on a track. And the longer he doesn't know, the less real that future feels.

"Wow, Maine! Now that's a roadtrip," says Sally.

 _Sally's what's coming next_ , he reminds himself. He just needs to take one lap at a time. He needs to think about now, not three weeks from now, three months from now, a year from now. Watching himself at OKC doesn't help, though.

It feels like he's sitting here, in this stupid room, and the car on the tape is someone else. He watches that car come in second only to Storm. Two years back, that car wins. Three, and it's second to Cal. (Cal, whose first love in life was probably the road course.) Four, and it's fourth behind Cal, Brick, and Bobby. And it's not like he can escape that red car, either, because it's been around longer than that track has.

He listens to the static of road noise on Sally's end of the line. She's humming to herself. He hears the click of her blinker as she passes someone.

Lightning flips back to 2016's footage and tries to pay attention to Storm, rather than the car behind him. He'd actually completely forgotten about Storm; he and Cruz have had other concerns. And Storm's sophomore year wasn't anything compared to the splash he'd made the year before, now that the whole field was Next-Gen - maybe even Next-Next-Gen. Coming into Daytona, cars had talked - of course they had - about Storm's ten win streak, about the likelihood he'd topple Doc's record for season wins. But then he'd lost to Cruz. And if Storm's still got eyes for the record, this year it's already well out of reach.

It's weird, but Storm just doesn't matter to Lightning anymore - not like he used to. Lightning would like to think it's because he's grown as a car. But as he tries for the hundredth time to focus on the footage, part of him's afraid maybe he's just given up. The scariest part is, he can't tell. He really can't.

"I don't understand why trucks can't just stay in the slow lane. Like, do you have to drive three wide? Do you?" Sally mutters.

"Where are you?" Lightning asks, only too happy to drop what his train of thought.

"Arizona still. I probably won't get in 'til late. Giving Mater the drive-through took longer than I anticipated. Which in retrospect I guess I should have anticipated. He's very detail-oriented."

"He is?"

"Let's just say the Cone now has an official policy for whenever an alien invasion, flash flood, and chamois shortage all happen at once."

Lightning chuckles.

"He misses you, you know."

"Yeah, I know. I'm just - not great company right now."

Sally breathes an overloud sigh of relief. "Wow, I'm glad you said that! Because here I was, thinking, boy, I really should've brought an audiobook for this drive instead."

"I'm serious, Sally. I yelled at Cal today. I mean, out of everyone on the planet. Why would anyone yell at Ca - aaaugh!" Lightning yelps, as a thunderous metallic banging interrupts the call.

"Hey, McQueen! You in there?" Shouts a voice from the other side of the door.

It's Cal. Because of course it is.

Cal shouts, "I just found out Bobby's in town for a thing tonight, and I thought maybe we could - "

"Not right now, Cal!" Lightning shouts back once he's recovered from the shock.

There's too much edge to his tone, and Cal doesn't miss it. "Oh. Uh, okay! Sorry!" A muffled burst of engine noise, and Cal's gone.

Lightning sighs through his teeth.

"You just did it again, didn't you," says Sally.

Then she adds, "You're sitting in a garage in the dark watching racing footage, aren't you."

"I have to. I can't let Cruz down. I - " Lightning breaks off, half-expecting this to summon Cruz like it had Cal. When no one else threatens to pound his door down he continues, more softly, "I just - It's not working. And she's disappointed, I can tell, and then I yell at her. And when she looks at me, I - "

"When she looks at you, what? Has she actually said, 'Hey Stickers, you're the worst, I'm so disappointed,' I wish we'd never met?" asks Sally.

"No," Lightning admits. "You know she'd never say that. But I don't need the proof; I have the proof. We both have the proof! The whole field has the proof. And I just - Whenever we talk, it never feels right, it never feels good, and I don't know why, because I _like_ her! But I can't - At Daytona, I knew exactly what to say, and she knew exactly what to do and we just - We don't work like that anymore. It stopped. I don't know what happened."

"Liking someone's not the same thing as knowing them," Sally points out.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, for example. What's my favorite flower?"

"Red's geraniums. The purple and white ones, on the south side of Stanley," Lightning answers instantly.

He hears Sally puff air from her cheeks. "Lucky guess," she says.

"How could that possibly be a lucky guess?!" he objects, dismayed.

Sally shushes him. "You're messing with my analogy, loverboy. My point is - or it was supposed to be - that a relationship is longer than a hundred laps. Maybe you just need more time to build up your rapport."

"But we didn't get penalized 35 points for having poor communication skills."

"Okay, back to basics, then. When you and Doc were first starting out, what would he tell you?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm not Doc, and Cruz isn't me. Whatever we're missing, it's not like it's lost in the garage somewhere."

"Work with me here."

"Sal, I don't remember!" Lightning bursts out. He feels like he's going to cry. "I don't remember his _advice_. I just remember him. You know, being Doc. Being here. And now he's not. I don't know how to use that; I don't think that's something you can use. It's just loss. And I feel so - _alone_ in this. I - "

"Lightning! Lightning. You're not alone. I promise."

Lightning stays silent.

"Hang in there," says Sally. "You can do this."

There's a soft tap at his door. "Mr. McQueen?" says the voice on the other side.

"You can do this," Sally repeats. "Oop, there's my exit. Stopping for gas. Gotta run!" Her voice blinks out.

"Yeah, Cruz?" Lightning calls, as he swings around to face the door and hits the switch to open it.

She looks nervous. Lightning feels nervous.

"Hi," she says. "I feel like this morning we kind of - "

"I know. I - "

"Yeah, me too."

They stare at each other for a moment.

"I was thinking - " Cruz begins, wending her tires in and out, in and out. "I just thought I'd ask if maybe you wanted to come meet my family. But maybe not. I mean, maybe you don't. And I totally - "

For a moment, Lightning doesn't; he wants to disappear. Then he desperately does. Then he's not sure what he wants.

"Absolutely," he says.

Cruz's eyes widen, and so does her smile. "Really?"

"Really," says Lightning, as he joins her in the hall.

He thinks of geraniums.


	6. Chapter 6

Lightning was hoping they'd run into Cal on their way out, but he's nowhere to be found.

Lightning sighs.

"You know, it's okay if you don't want to go," Cruz says, glancing over at him.

Lightning snaps to attention, sits higher on his tires. "No, it's not that! I just - messed something up. It's not about you, or your family. I'm excited to meet them!"

Cruz still doesn't look entirely convinced, but she's willing to go along with it. Outside, she signals for the onramp and they plunge into Los Angeles's intricate tangle of freeways. It's peak rush hour, so the going's slow, but Cruz takes them through a well-practiced, strategic combination of interstates, state highways, surface streets, and service roads until finally an off-ramp plonks them unexpectedly in the middle of a residential block.

"So, when you say your family," Lightning ventures. "What does that… mean, exactly?"

"What do you mean, what does it mean?"

Lightning scuffs the ground with his LF tire. "How did you meet?"

"At the dealership, I guess. My brothers and I rolled off the line, and we were at the dealership for a while, and then some older models came and picked us up and we drove out to Ranchos Penitas. You know - family."

Lightning doesn't know. He's never really thought about it. It's impossible to remember your own creation, and he's never really seen the point in trying, but there was no dealership. There were no other models. One day, he just was. He was one of a kind, and he was a racecar.

"What about you?" asks Cruz. She turns to him, and must understand his expression, because she ways, "Wait, were you alone? How did you know what to do? Didn't you feel - "

"I just thought that's how it was for everyone," Lightning interjects. He doesn't like talking about this. "I mean, I was a racecar. So I, uh. I knew I had to find an agent, so I did. And then a sponsor... And then another sponsor. Then I got a crew chief - uh, a couple of crew chiefs, I mean, I guess kind of a lot of - Hey! Is that music?"

Cruz nods emphatically. "Block party. My family always holds as big tailgate for the new arrivals. They just got in tonight. I'm so excited to meet them!"

"Block party?" Lightning had been under the impression they were headed to a garage to say hi to a few cars and have a boring, leisurely Monday night. "Cruz, why didn't you mention that this morning? You can't miss something like this!"

Cruz turns up a driveway, the boom and dazzle of festivities emanating from the other side of the building. "Well, I mean… I didn't want to make you feel bad if you had to say no."

"Cruz, I'm not _evil._ "

"Of course not, Mr. McQueen! But we're professionals. Sometimes you have to say no."

Do you, though? The thought pops unbidden into his mind. He's tired of saying No; No, do it over; no, not like that. Some part of him wants to run wild. Do something crazily, aggressively disobedient. He doesn't want to talk about pit squares or engine volume anymore.

On the other side of the fence, there's probably fifty cars all squeezed into a narrow backlot. All makes and models - though if Lightning had to guess, everyone's more or less GM. Then he spots a microcar yelling something rapidfire across the lot, in Spanish. So not everyone, then.

He's not sure what he'd been expecting. A yard full of identical Cruzes? A collection of yellow cars? A herd of progressively larger and smaller versions of Cruz? In retrospect all of these assumptions are stupid, but this is uncharted territory for Lightning. How's he supposed to know? But he does know; he should know. The Ramirez family, like any other, is a group of cars that found each other. Cal and Mr. The King, Rusty and Dusty - that sort of thing. The Ramirezes are just a bigger version of that.

When they look at each other, there's something there - an inflection - every time. The whole lot moves like an organism, each piece freewheeling through space on its own yet tethered, responsive, to the bodies around it. It's not unlike the track. Or Radiator Springs on quiet days, unpunctuated by cars from out of town.

There's two or three cars huddled at the fenceline, looking so new Lightning can see the dazzle of their rotors from clear across the yard, uncolored by black grease, dirt, rust. They have stickers on their side windows proclaiming 2018 in bold pink. They're not a part of all this yet.

"HEY! Mamacita!" shouts a beefy coupe, one of a gaggle cruising lazy figure-eights through the crowd. "Missed you, homegirl!"

"Cruz! How's our little champ?"

"Auntie, come outside! Cruz is here!"

"Ey, baby girl, what took you so long? Tata been slaving over his tire-misu all day without you!" calls a coke bottle car as he draws near. When he notices Lightning, he whispers conspiratorially, "Don't worry, it's not made out of tires."

"Rico!" Cruz beams. "Rico, this is my friend, Lightning."

"Hey, I know you! Racecar, right? For one of the big ones, tracks everywhere, right?" says Rico, punching him good-naturedly in the tire.

"Exactly, with the tracks everywhere," Lightning replies mildly.

"Cruz knows all about that stuff. You shoulda seen her when she was fresh from the manufacturer, following Raúl and Fura around, being all like, Ask me anything! Ask me anything! By the way, girlie, Lola gonna pitch a fit when she see that spoiler. You know how she feel about body mods. Just sayin'!"

Then Rico's gone, part of the crowd again. And when they meet Auntie Lola, her lip does curl when she sees Cruz's new look, though she doesn't object to anything directly.

"Work - they make all of you wear this?" asks Auntie Lola. "...'Dinoco'?"

"They design paint for everyone, auntie."

"I don't like decals," says Auntie Lola. And when Cruz introduces Lightning, she says, "I thought you were red."

"I am! But right now I'm blue," says Lightning, feeling incredibly stupid. Any deeper explanation is more personal than Lightning is willing to go, in a sea of utter strangers. He can't imagine anyone here would know who Doc was, anyway.

Auntie Lola sniffs. As she takes her leave of them, she mumbles something about natural factory paint, stickers, and artimañas de la ramera.

"She's very conservative," Cruz explains.

"But it's just paint," says Lightning.

"She's very conservative," Cruz explains. "Do you want a drink? I'll go get us drinks."

And Cruz is gone, lost to the sea. The beat of the music buzzes under Lightning's tires. Every once in a while, someone will take notice of him - a questioning gaze, as though they're not sure if he's supposed to be there - but mostly, the clan is interested in each other.

It's a nice change of pace, really. In Lightning's experience, parties usually mean everyone is staring at you - or you can tell in their eyes that even as you're speaking, they're checking you off a long list of cars they need to network with tonight. Which is its own kind of comfort zone, because Lightning's the master of schmoozing on cruise control, but this isn't bad, either.

This is good.

He tries to talk to the new arrivals, still huddled at the fenceline. Mostly they just blink and smile.

When he scans the crowd for Cruz, she hasn't actually made it to the drink pumps yet - big, above-ground tanks sitting on industrial-strength dollies. She gets sidelined by one set of cousins, then another. She kisses a gigantic old Town and Country on the fender.

Lightning smiles.

This is good, he tells himself.

"Hey, what does your transmission take? We got ATF, Mercon - oh, but be careful. This the high proof stuff. It can get you FROTHY," shouts a car Lightning is certain he hasn't met yet, popping a wheelie distressingly close to Lightning's face.

"Um, just Mobil 1 usually. But you know, I just topped off, and I'm planning to drive home tonight, so - "

"See, I told you! FROTHY." The car shoves Lightning toward the fence. Through the gap in the crowd Lightning can see two cars testing out lopsided doughnuts, slipping erratically through their gears. One shouts, "I JUST FOUND FOURTEENTH GEAR, I JUST - FOUND - "

At the far end of the lot, well away from the doughnuters, there are some traffic cones set up to mark off a drag strip. Cars take turns two by two. Some of them aren't made for it, in any possible way, but they tumble down the track regardless, screeching wild. Others are genuine contenders - like when a solid contingent of cousins starts chanting "Raúl! Raúl! Raúl!" and a car with more than a little Camaro takes the track opposite a tiny, boxy car that a different contingent of cars cheers "Fura! Fura! Fura!"

Fura must have some impressive mods under her hood, though, because she jumps off the line and hits her power band in no time flat. She and the Camaro hit the end of the quarter-mile too close for Lightning to call it.

Back at the starting line, Rico shows one of the newcomers how to do a burnout. Every time a little smoke trickles out her back end she freezes up, but eventually she gets her tires tacky. Fura pushes Cruz to the line.

Cruz is pure joy as she flies down the strip. And yeah - there's not a doubt in Lightning's mind she's the fastest car on the block. All the way down, he knows there's not a thought in her head but flight. Freedom.

Cruz still lets up at the finish and gives the newcomer the win. She's ecstatic. Cruz is more ecstatic.

A good hour later, Cruz finally wends her way back, two cans balanced on her hood.

"Hope you don't mind mineral," she says, popping a can in front of him. "My uncle swears the superior taste is worth the sludge, but who really knows."

"So, what does your family think about your racing? It sounds like they're pretty proud of you."

Cruz takes a long slurp of oil. "Oh, I haven't told them," she says quickly, and takes another long slurp. "They'd freak."

"What?! Why? You're awesome!"

Cruz fidgets. "It's just weird, you know? It's some whole other life. Besides, you can be a trainer 'til your wheels fall off. It's stable. But racing's not forever."

Lightning opens his mouth to object, but Cruz doesn't give him the space.

"You know it's not," she says. "And it's not just 'cause of Next-Gens. Because maybe something happens - like a crash, or system failure. Or maybe you just don't win enough, or your sponsor goes under, or - "

Lightning laughs reassuringly. "Well, I don't think Dinoco - "

"Oil's not forever, either," Cruz insists. "Most of my family? They were rig operators back in Texas. But then they weren't needed anymore. Just like that. That's the kind of thing they worry about. When you have a big family like this, keeping everyone fed, everyone in tires - it's a whole production. I mean, we cross the country every week like it's nothing. And sometimes I just think - I think what it took to get everyone out that one time. It's just different."

Lightning looks out at the yard, at all the dozens of cars packed in close. He gets that.

"We all moved out to LA so I could be different, and my brothers could be different. I mean, personal training? That's not a job - not back home. But LA, they figured. LA was different." Cruz turns to him. " Because it's Los Angeles, right? Where cars need crazy, fancy stuff like 'personal training,' and everyone's these dainty little electric supercars, and, and there's an organic fuel truck on every corner. But racing? That's just crazy talk. Do you have any idea what it takes to make a living as a racer?"

Then she adds, "Well, I mean. Obviously you do."

Increasingly, though, Lightning's beginning to think that he doesn't. Not in that way. Even now - when he does have a family, he has Radiator Springs - the only car he's ever been responsible to is himself. Harv has always handled Mack's salary. Harv has always handled Harv's salary, for that matter. Lightning doesn't even know what his total winnings even are, though surely Sally must (something about fiduciary duty).

The only time he remembers really thinking about money was when he was first starting out. Harv had made one thing clear: Don't crash. Because if you do, it's all over. You are no one, and there's no one and no pocketbook who's gonna pull you out of that. This dream you have - it'll be gone before the next flag even drops.

But even then, he hadn't thought much of it. He'd known he wasn't gonna crash. He was going to win. He was Lightning McQueen.

His carbon tracker itches.

"Besides," Cruz continues. "Raúl and Fura are the racers. It's their life. They _own_ that strip. I couldn't take that away from them."

"But it's your life, too, Cruz."

Cruz gives him a strange look, unexpectedly sad. "Can I have two?" she asks. "Becomes sometimes I feel like I have two - one out there, and one back here. I don't know how to put them together, and I don't even - Maybe I don't want to. Maybe I just wanna make gaspacho and try not scandalize my auntie too much."

Lightning doesn't say anything, so Cruz shrugs. "Family, you know? It gets complicated."

"Yeah," says Lightning. Suddenly, he feels heavy. "You know, Cruz, this was great. I mean it. But I think I'm gonna turn in."

Cruz takes a finishing sip of her oil. "Sure thing. I'm just gonna say goodbye to - "

"No, no," Lightning stops her. "You should stay. They miss you! Besides, the party's not even over yet. Tomorrow, okay?"

Cruz grins affectionately. "Suit yourself, old man. I'll see you tomorrow. 5:30!"

Lightning beams. "5:30!"

* * *

He's lost almost immediately. In the dark, all the streets look the same, and he hadn't been paying enough attention on the way out. The traffic had been so erratic he's not even sure how far from the Center he is.

"Classic," he mutters.

But it's not like he's in a hurry, and Sally won't be in for another few hours at least. Maybe she'd know where to go from here. He'd taken her advice and gotten to know more about Cruz, but if anything the way forward only seems less clear. They are so different from one another. And part of Lightning thinks, what if this really isn't how it's supposed to go? What if what they're doing is wrong? Maybe Cruz isn't supposed to be a racecar. Maybe he's not supposed to be - whatever it is he's doing.

It's not that Cruz can't race. Clearly she can. Clearly she wants to. But what if there are other things at play? Bigger things?

It's one thing to give up one Piston Cup. But there are whole worlds out there Lightning hadn't even known he'd never experienced until tonight. Huge, complicated ones rife with responsibilities. And what kind of disrespect is it if he just pretends they don't exist?

He wants to make them the enemy, just like Cup bureaucracy is the enemy, but neither of those are true. The truth is, he's a little jealous. Maybe that's not the word.

He just wants to understand.

Did Sally have aunts she's never mentioned? Sisters he's never asked about? Should he have asked?

Somewhere on the streets of Los Angeles, loneliness finds Lightning.

It's several blocks before he realizes that the shadow he feels is not the same as the shadow he can see - the shadow that spreads out beneath him, wider than his own might cast. There's something behind him.

He can't see it, doesn't want to turn around to let it know he's onto it. Whatever it is, it doesn't have its lights on. It doesn't want to be seen.

 _Oh, Lightning,_ he asks himself. _Why? Why are you always someplace you're not supposed to be?_

At the next stop sign, Lightning revs his engine and gets ready to redline it. He hopes it'll scare the thing off. But if not, at least it'll know who it's dealing with.

"Are you trying to impress me, Fabulous?" says the thing behind him.

And oh, Lightning would know that voice anywhere. Every coil in his body shudders.

"Don't call me that, Storm."


	7. Chapter 7

"You don't get to call me that."

Storm laughs. "Isn't that what you call yourself these days, Fabulous?"

"Seriously, cut it out. What are you even doing here?"

"I live here."

Lightning emits a heavy sigh. "Of course you do." This city was built to torture him.

Storm doesn't turn off and disappear into some snazzy, LED-lit garage, though.

Lightning tries to ignore him - _just keep driving_ \- but Storm stays a creeping presence behind him for two blocks, then five. Then they hit double-digits together.

"So," Lightning begins as conversationally as he can. He tries not to grit his teeth. "Haven't made headlines in a while. Dry spell?"

"Always in the top ten," Storm replies, dismissive.

"Right, because that's how Jackson Storm wants to define his racing career. Behind nine other guys."

"At least it's an actual racing career. I don't need to rely on dramatic stunts to keep me relevant."

Lightning rolls his eyes. "What, you hadn't heard? That's kind of my MO."

Truth be told, it's not the first time someone's said that about him. Lightning figures if you stick around long enough, everyone will have said everything about you. That's just fact. As long as you can remember that, it makes it easier to drown out the noise.

Or it should, except Storm is Storm, and Storm is a special case. And Lightning's learning that he was wrong - so wrong! - about being over him. It's like a pressure front. It's like Storm shows up and Lighting _feels_ him. Not at his tail, but in him, pulling one plate from another, putting tension in his gears, cracking tightness in his screws.

Now that Storm's back in the picture - lurking insistently, unnervingly in Lightning's blind spot - he's right back to square one, as though Cruz had never beat Storm, and Storm had never ceased to matter, and Lightning had never grown up. He just - Everything about Storm sets him on edge. The growl of his engine, the prickle of his exhaust, the crunch of loose asphalt under his tires - Lightning can't stand it. Heck, he can hardly stand Storm downshifting for the stoplight.

Lightning pops recalcitrantly into neutral, then brakes. This isn't a race, he reminds himself. _Pull it together._

Storm's just noise.

"I respect your wins, you know," says the noise. "Seven-time champ? I'd be stupid not to. Maybe if you lived up to them I'd respect you, too."

 _Steady, Lightning._

 _Steady._

"Oh, what does that even - " he starts, but Storm doesn't let him finish.

"The thing is, I know that your rookie year, you only took third. Meanwhile, I'm the first rookie to win the championship." Storm fixes Lightning with a friendly grin - if friendly had fangs, and a predilection for burying bodies.

He continues, "I meant it when I said it was my pleasure to beat you. But I'm not going to stop at a race or ten, McQueen. Mark me: When I'm done, they won't have any reason to remember you."

Not that they'll need Storm's help. Where Lightning's concerned, "took third" doesn't seem like the most relevant description of that particular race. But unless you were actually there? That's probably all it is to _most_ cars, not just Storm. After a while, a race is only a number and a winner. There's no stat sheet that remembers what it once felt like, what it still meant.

Sure, there's always the old-timers. The ones who laugh mercilessly when they find out it took you three whole days to recognize the Hudson Hornet - but who then turn around and rattle off your own stats, highlights from your own races, with a lovingly encyclopedic specificity that far outstrips your own memory. But maybe they'll fade with the old guard, too; when the sport changes, so do its fans.

The light turns green, and Lightning braces himself. He expects Storm to shoot in front of him, blind spot to center stage like time and space don't even matter. Because that's what Storm does - it's what he always does, will always do. And Storm's the type to make his points as dramatically as possible.

But after a moment of stillness and silence, all Storm says from behind him is, "Light's green, McQueen."

Lightning sets his jaw and rolls forward. The streets keep getting darker. He figured he'd find an onramp somewhere and drive until he could orient himself around an interstate, but the highway stays loud and distant above them, a constant hum that feels a world away. There's no point of entry. He weaves around a rash of broken glass and kicks at a loose hunk of pavement, which skitters across the uneven street until it plonks against the foot of the overpass.

"How much do you even know about my rookie year?" Lightning says eventually.

Storm wavers from his line, just enough that Lightning catches the movement in his peripheral vision. But if he thought Storm's deviance might mean he had something worthwhile to say, he'd be wrong.

Storm says, "You realize how long ago that was, right? I bet iPhones weren't even invented yet."

"What does that matter to you? Racecars don't have phones!"

"I have one."

Lightning's first impulse is to ask, _Does it have Mapquest?_ He's been driving lost since he left Cruz's doorstep, and if anything, the interstate only feels farther away.

"I don't believe you," he says instead. "What's your number?"

"Wait, why are you asking for my digits?" Storm asks, reversing abruptly.

"Because I don't trust you! Why else? I mean, come on. You don't actually have a phone."

Storm shifts on his tires. After a moment of deliberation, he admits, "It's 20. My phone number, I mean."

"Wow. Seriously?"

"Laugh all you want. But let me guess - your trailer's locker combination is 95. It is, isn't it."

Lightning glares hard and petulant at a distant streetlight. "Maybe," he admits.

He hears a soft ping behind him. Then a droid-like voice: _RESUME file: You are in a twisty little MAZE._

Storm frowns. The voice says, _You cannot use the BLOWTORCH here._ Then it says, _You cannot go LEFT._

Then, _Are you sure you want to QUIT?_

"That's... not Mapquest," says Lightning, wheeling around to face Storm and the voice.

"Obviously," says Storm, though he offers no further explanation. "I told you I had a phone."

Lightning's gotta admit, he is genuinely impressed. "How on earth did you convince - "

"You don't really want one, if you're a racecar - you know, fangirls - but Gale got them to let me keep it. So we can get in touch if we need to."

"Who's Gale?"

"My transporter."

"Who else do you call?" The possibilities seem limitless. If Lightning had a phone, he'd call Sally, and then he wouldn't have to sit out here with Storm.

Storm hesitates.

"Why would you use your phone to call anyone?" he replies. "Please, McQueen."

Right, right. Old man joke. It's not like he doesn't own a computer; he knows what an app is.

But it's more than that, isn't it.

 _You're lonely._

It's like an electric shock; it's just so obvious, all at once. The feeling rushes through him, fire through his cylinders, because Lightning remembers that. He remembers what it had felt like to be that lonely. To have no one.

 _You don't understand,_ Lightning thinks. _Because you can't. You've never -_ No family, no block parties, no direction but a call for the track. _No one's ever -_

"Stop staring. It's creepy," says Storm.

Lightning executes a turn so tight his steering column squeals. He immediately zips forward, Storm in tow. Street after street, he wrestles with this thoughts. Basic rundown:

1\. Storm is lonely.  
2\. Lightning knows what that's like.  
3\. Lightning should do something about it.

The thing is, Lightning doesn't care. He doesn't want to be Storm's friend. He doesn't even want to be in the same city, and it's a small but blessed miracle Cruz hasn't had to pit anywhere near him all season. Storm's a snide, smarmy -

Lightning takes an aggressive series of right turns just so he won't have to wait for the light. If he stops, he'll have to say something, and he's not sure yet what's going to come out of his mouth. Three reds and three rights in a row. They're driving in circles.

Because it's more than that, isn't it.

Lightning can't look at Storm without also seeing everything he stands for. He looks at Storm and he sees supersession; he sees futility; he sees the end of a road. And there are so many reasons that's not true - not in that way - and so many things Lightning also loves with all his heart, things that Storm and the race and that whole world can never take away from him - but still he feels it, and it is loss. That loss is cold, and it is thick; it's like washer fluid in his engine and he can hardly breathe around it.

Lightning knows he should embrace the moment. Accept his fork in the road with grace and push on in his newfound direction. He should extend an olive branch - if not for Storm, then for his own sake. It's the right thing to do.

But see, he'd thought he'd already found grace. He'd already made peace. Yet here he is all over again - and maybe this time, there is no escaping that pain, that loss. Maybe it was foolish to think this wouldn't destroy him. He swerves blindly into another turn.

"Do you even know where you're going?" asks Storm, in a tone that suggests he already knows the answer.

"Yes," Lighting snaps, to spite him. He tries to catch a glimpse of the next street sign as they pass by, but it doesn't make a difference. _Allessandro Street? Where's_ that _supposed to be?_

It's the right thing to do, he tells himself. Befriend Storm, be the better car. Embody grace.

If only Storm would stop riding his blind spot. Or, you know, existing in proximity.

"Why are you still following me?" His voice sounds more strained than he'd hoped.

"Because you said you know where you're going," says Storm.

Which, frankly, Storm does not deserve his grace, even if Lighting had any to give. If Storm is willing to wander Los Angeles all night just to watch him fail, far be it from Lightning to deny him.

The streets are quiet now, untouched by traffic and disconnected from the interstate. The streetlamps are fewer and farther between, and more and more they stay dark as Lightning passes under them. Maybe Storm will hit a pothole his headlight-less face couldn't see and he'll need a tow.

Hey, a car can dream.

 _And this is - Baxter Street, okay... Oh - Whoa._

"Holy sh - "

"Something wrong, Storm?" Lightning asks, once he, too, has recovered himself.

They're at the foot of a mountain. Or they should be, except it's paved, more or less, and it claims it's meant to be a street. It's Baxter Street. It shoots straight up, the crest so far into the sky its silhouette is only just visible against the urban glow of the city beyond. Lightning's headlights only reach a third of the way up. Beyond them, the road is a dark and seeping mystery.

Lightning takes it in.

This is the kind of hill that mangles. Cars with fewer horses, maybe they don't make it up at all. Cars that can gotta make sure they don't start with too much power, and need to lift off at just the right moment, or end up beached, or worse. This is the kind of hill that tears into low-seated parts and doesn't let go. Twists alignments. Tests suspensions.

But it's also the kind of hill that lets you fly.

"No," says Storm, when he realizes what Lightning's thinking. "No way. Maybe this isn't a concern for you, but I have parts down there I want to keep."

"You know, I've got a friend back home who loves doing this kind of stuff - and he's a rusty old tow truck."

"Good for him!"

And so what if Storm's lonely? He's a big boy. He probably deserves it; heaven knows Lightning did. Lightning also knows that friendship is earned. You gotta meet it halfway. Lightning figures Storm's got the right of way here, and he can either exercise it or get left behind.

Lightning revs his engine. And then he's not thinking about Storm. He's not thinking about right things to do, or good things to do. He's not thinking about what Doc would think, what Sally would think, if he failed to do them. He's not thinking at all.

"Are these the kinds of stunts you pull with that girl!" Storm shouts, but Lightning's attention slams to the road. The road is so much easier.

It's a washboard, but once he hits seventy it's just him and the air. He breathes in deep. Sparks fly as he exhales, goes metal to asphalt with the road as he hits the crest, but he takes another thirsty breath, stretches high, and he's airborne down the other side: He's airborne.

He's free.

He doesn't see the stars, not like from the buttes of Radiator Springs, but the horizon dances orange like the city's on fire, and the matte gray-blue of the night sky for a moment seems endless. It's its own kind of beauty.

He meets the pavement again about halfway down, exhilarated, if no closer to grace. The impact hurts, in a way that almost edges into delight; his shocks quake, and the lights around him melt from their sources until they become writhing worms of neon across his vision. He bleeds his tires against the road and twists to keep from hitting the straightaway face-first. He's 100 percent humming adrenaline.

It's not until he blinks the lights back into their fixtures that he realizes that the lights are headlights.

A lot of headlights.

"Thought we heard something good," says a voice that Lightning can't quite place at the same time he thinks _This_ can't _be good._

He squints against the headlights, which vary in tone from yellow-white to searing blue. He can only snatch glimpses of paint, flashes of metal, before the lights drive his gaze elsewhere - into more headlights, more faces. He doesn't know how many there are.

"Lookit that roll cage," says another.

"Nah, I wanna see his cams."

"Pop his hood and let's see the goods!"

"You're a long way from home, ain't you?"

"Hey… guys," says Lightning. He backs up slowly, his back bumper scraping against the road as it inclines sharply behind him.

The headlights, en masse, pulse forward.

"Hello, racecar."

 _You look a little lost._

* * *

He's asleep. He's asleep, and this is a nightmare. It's the only real explanation Lighting can come up with, except maybe he's gotten too swept up in one of Mater's crazy stories, and that's what this is. If it is, Mater's bound to sweep in and save the day any moment now.

The set of headlights directly in front of him has the meanest engine in him Lightning's ever heard, and he's not exactly a stranger to powerful machinery. _Definitely not regulation,_ Lightning babbles at himself, as though he's safe within the walls of the training center, still poring over the new 2017 rulebooks to make sure Cruz meets spec, and not in the dark, in the city, at the center of an infestation of headlights.

Mater doesn't show.

Instead, one of the cars breaks from the pack and sidles up to Lightning's fenders, and it feels so much like that car's about to take a bite out of him that Lightning leaps sideways. "Whoa, whoa! Hey!"

"Caught a little glimpse of chassis!" the car nearest him cackles.

Frantic, Lightning shoots his gaze up the dark side of Baxter Street. He'd kind of hoped he'd topped out on death-defying antics for the year, but apparently for some things, the sky's the limit. And a slight hitch, as far as the "defying" part of that goes: There's a mountain in the way.

"You ready?" someone shouts from the mass of headlights. He's answered by another: "He looks ready!" And another: "Gonna cut and run!"

"Hey, you know we race for pinks out here, right? You ready? 'Cause this is real road - "

Within seconds, someone has called dibs on his drive train, his exhaust system. The car in front - tall, loud, and neon green - doesn't want anything special, just his hubcaps, for style. And there's a mountain in the middle of his escape route.

So he does the only thing he can think to do: Gun it like a Charger outta Dodge.

He has the element of surprise on his side, at the very least, as he careens up Baxter in reverse. It takes enough focus to keep his wheels straight that he doesn't think too hard about what might happen if he hits an unanticipated bump, what happens if someone down there's actually worth his weight in acceleration and charges after him. Whatever the incline, the road's plenty long enough to gain some real speed, more speed than anyone could manage in reverse gear, that's for sure - _Dig harder, dig harder -_

Lightning gasps as he hits the top sooner than intended and his undercarriage bounces off the pavement, pounding all the air from his system. He feels his back tires lift as his belly scrapes over the crest. Then the feeling reverses and he teeters onto his back wheels again, hits something with a soft crunch.

 _can't breathe -_

"Unbelievable."

Blearily, dazedly, Lightning recognizes that it's Storm, Storm still slowly taking the front half of Baxter at a calculated tangent. Lightning groans, sinks deeper into him -

 _can't breathe_ -

His vision spots, rainbow pinpricks in the darkness. For a moment he's bodiless.

Storm jerks away and Lightning brakes on reflex, hugging the incline, abandoned by coherent thought and focused only on the pain - and that's when Storm hears the rest of them coming.

" _Unbelievable,"_ Storm repeats, more aggressively. "Come on, we gotta go!"

Lightning just gasps, trying to force air through his engine. He's so turned around he's not even sure which direction "go" means. Storm shouts, "I said GO!" Then something slams Lightning sideways, and suddenly he's facing down the full expanse of Baxter again, rattling down its rough surface toward an unforgiving bottom. Storm's beside him.

They both have the same idea at the bottom of the hill, and they swing out, burn rubber, and disrupt the hedges lining the cross-street in an explosion of wood and petals. The impact brings Lightning around, disorientation hiking into panic. And he guns it, because he knows the only thing he's got on his side is that stupid, stupid hill. Once he loses that lead, he's done for, because those cars know these streets. And they're right. He's lost.


	8. Chapter 8

If they keep running, they're gonna get caught. There are too many streets here that lead nowhere. Too many ways to shoot down a straightaway, only to end up cornered and outnumbered at the cross street.

In a dark alley lined with a passel of cars sleeping streetside, they box in a sleeping Honda and let their engines go silent. Lightning shuts his headlights off.

"Bang up, job, McQueen. Really," Storm pants.

Lightning draws a series of shuddering breaths. He feels like roadkill, and for the love of his oil pan he never wants to do that again, but he doesn't think he's seriously hurt. Just shocked and sore. Not that Storm asked.

"Okay," he breathes. "We're gonna be okay. We just gotta - lay low - blend in - "

Storm snorts. "Blend in? You've got 'Fabulous Lightning McQueen' on you in bright yellow, you freak. And you have that weird, tall little tail - "

"Right, because you _so_ resemble this Honda Accord!" Lightning hisses over the sleeping car between them.

Storm won't stop jittering his tires.

"Wait, are you scared?" Lightning asks.

"You say that like you aren't," Storm responds defensively, willing himself to stillness.

"Of course I am! Did you see those guys? But I'm me, and you're, you know. You."

"I'm not dignifying that with a response."

Lightning rolls his eyes. Even scared, it's hard to grant Storm any sympathy.

"So how do we get out of here? Which way to the interstate? Are we close enough to make a run for it?" Lightning asks, because the sooner they exit this nightmare, the better.

"How should I know?"

"You live here!"

"Yeah. In _Brentwood._ " The way he says it makes it sound like that should mean anything to Lightning. "Out here, I've just been following you."

"Right, I forgot about Stalker Monday."

Storm frowns. "Nightlife, McQueen. There's a good scene here. It's not my fault you got in my way."

"Yeah, okay." Because that doesn't sound ridiculous.

Storm must realize it, too, because he stays silent for a moment. Then he says, "The more time I spend with you, the more I hate you."

"What a coincidence," Lightning replies, glaring death up at the hazy sky above. "Why do you hate me, Storm? 'Cause I gotta say, the suspense is unreal."

"You have no remorse, do you," says Storm. "None whatsoever. It's sociopathic."

Which isn't at all what Lightning was expecting to hear.

Remorse?

"What're you - What are you talking about?"

Storm pulls off the curb and into the street to face him. Lightning can't make out his features in the dark, but Storm's voice paints a picture well enough. "You _left_ ," he spits.

"I - "

Storm cuts him off. "Either you race or you don't. You can't just punch your ticket in the middle and throw some girl onto the track to win your race for you. That first green flag drops, and you enter into a pact with every other car on that track! You can't just leave that."

"I'm still not following - "

"Do you care about racing at all?" Storm's tone is accusatory, lacquered with betrayal. It's different from how Storm usually sounds, when his questions are insults.

He's actually asking.

That cuts deeper.

"How can you possibly ask me that?" Lightning manages. His mouth feels dry. "You're the one who has no concept of real - "

"You finish the race. That's rule number one, McQueen - even before winning. You don't just prance into your pit box midway through 'cause you're never gonna clear the Top 5. It's a total disrespect to every racer out there. It's a disrespect to the entire sport."

"No one was prancing," Lightning objects sourly. Not that there's any way to make Storm understand what Florida had meant. How important it had been to get Cruz on that track, how hard it had been to do the right thing. Storm will never understand that kind of sacrifice. But -

Lightning frowns.

He inhales deeply, breath becoming the bellows of his camshafts as he rounds turn three. The sun is February bright, the track is warm and slick, the groove he's found is as good as it's gonna get. _Keep this up and you'll make the Top 10_ , says Smokey. It's meant as encouragement, because beggars can't be choosers, but Lightning hears _You're not gonna be good enough. Short of the twelve cars in front of you wrecking into the wall, you will never win this race._ Besides, it's begging that got him into this mess in the first place. That _you will never_ becomes a litany, and it's the only thing Lightning hears until Sterling tells Cruz the exact same thing: You're a trainer. And you will never be a racer.

That's why he'd given her the race. Cruz deserved the chance to prove herself. But -

He hadn't wanted to lose. Maybe that's all it was. Or if it wasn't everything, maybe that was still part of it. Lightning hadn't wanted to just lose, 40 seconds out from a photo finish, 100% disappointment and anti-climax. That part of it had been selfish, even ugly. Maybe somehow - after all the mud and sacred freaking dirt he'd dragged it through - he'd still had some glimmer of pride, and tagging out had been the only way to save it. A big hero move.

"That's the one thing I used to respect about you, McQueen. You always raced hard. But then you abandoned that. You abandoned all of us, and - "

"I'm not responsible for your abandonment issues!" Lightning interjects. "Or whatever weird samurai code of racing you've got going on, or your personal vendettas against me - none of it! Just because that race didn't go the way you wanted it to go doesn't mean I did anything wrong."

On its face, whatever Storm's upset about doesn't sound like anything Lightning cares about. If Storm's not used to the world not working exactly the way he thinks it should, Lightning's not gonna be the one to hold his tires steady through that. But -

His mind keeps hanging on the word. But.

But what if there was a sliver of truth in all that? What if there was a part of Lightning that hadn't called Cruz back because she deserved it, because he was willing to go all in for her - to give it all up because of all she stood to gain? What if part of it had been, even after all these years, petty self-interest?

The possibility is sour in his mouth. And maybe Storm's not the only car in this alleyway who hates Lightning McQueen.

"Is this some kind of headgame?" Lightning asks Storm. It'd be nice if it were, and Storm's game here was to sow these seeds of doubt. That way, maybe in the morning, after this nightmare joyride was over, things would feel clear and good again. But today hadn't begun particularly clear or good, even without Storm. Maybe now Lightning knows why.

"Why don't you ask your protégé?" says Storm. "That's kind of her game, isn't it?"

"Oh, like it's not yours, too."

"I knew you weren't listening. You kept coming back. Besides, I don't need to mess with you in order to beat you."

"What about Cruz?"

Storm's expression shifts, almost imperceptibly. "That was - That was a mistake. Getting up into the wall like that. Gale says that I need to get better at - "

But Lightning's not listening. _You will never, you will never, you will never,_ he thinks. _You will never win this race. So you better find some other way to come out on top._

It's not really heroism - generosity, bigness, whatever - if it's your second-string strategy. If it's because you have no other choice.

Lightning hates that he can look at Storm and still feel like the villain in the room. He hates that it took Storm to even dream that possibility. Because now it feels real. Very real.

He wants to go home.

"Not that any of that matters. My career is over," Storm finishes.

"Wait, what?"

And Storm's glare, Lightning can see; even in the darkness. "You weren't even listening," he accuses.

Lightning keeps his mouth shut.

"Ironically," Storm hisses, "I was just explaining everything you don't have to worry about or ever pay attention to, because you're the Cup darling, Lightning McQueen."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Your life as a Piston Cup champion must be so hard."

"I know what I am," says Storm. "I don't have any illusions about it. I can beat you on paper, McQueen, and just 'cause you try really hard or dream real big isn't gonna sway those numbers. We're different under the hood, and mine's gonna cross that line before you every single time. And the same thing's gonna be true of this year's rookies. Next year's rookies. Hell, Swervez could already beat me every single time, if he had any idea how to stay inside the groove. But one day, he's gonna figure that out. That's just the pace of technology. We're in the middle of an exponential burst. If any one of us gives them the tiniest little reason, we're gone, and it's gonna be next year's model wearing our number instead."

"So you think you're just a number," says Lightning.

"Only until we get arrested tonight. Then I'm nothing at all."

"That's stupid."

Storm laughs. "Is that what you think? 'Cause Rust-eze and now Dinoco just let you wander around the country, doing whatever you want? Let you miss qualifying? Do they just indulge whatever hare-brained scheme you offer up? If you were any other car, that crash last year would've shuttered your career. But everyone _loves_ you. You've got history. You've built your brand."

"I'm not a brand," Lightning replies testily.

"You don't remember what it's like, do you. To be new."

"You're not a rookie anymore, Storm."

"Which means now I have to really prove myself," Storm allows. "Playtime's over. But IGNTR's only sunk one year into me, and they've got trainees rolling off the line every week. If I mess up, I'm not worth the bad publicity. And guess what? Getting arrested for rolling with some cholo street gang tonight? That's messing up! What's Dinoco going to say if you go to jail?"

"Nothing good," says Lightning.

"But they'll forgive you. Because you're Lightning McQueen. Your drip pan's stained gold."

Always with the drip pans, Lightning frowns. But Storm's not wrong. Tex would have his hide, but he'd never cut Lightning loose. Tex would forgive him in a year or forty.

"You can't possibly understand," says Storm. "But whatever. I told you already - I know what I am, and what I'm not. But I hope it keeps you awake at night, knowing that you screwed me. Again."

The adrenaline panic that had ruled Storm earlier is gone. They lock eyes and all Lightning feels is Storm's moody nihilism, his resignation. If Storm's afraid now, he's hiding it well.

But if Storm has any talent at all, it's being two-faced.

"You're terrified," Lightning says. "You don't want to lose this. It's the worst thing you can possibly imagine, isn't it."

Storm's lip curls. "I just said - "

"Yeah, but that's not really how you feel."

Forget what Storm just said. Racing's not a numbers game, and a racer's not just hardware. A racer is skill, style, and a little bit of crazy. You're not just your cams, or your carburetor. You race with every part of you. You test every part of yourself. And you're never okay with being cut out of the magic. You can't be. Even if you're Storm, and you can't even tell what you're missing yet. You don't have a choice but to feel that loss. And nothing, nothing at all, can soften the blow.

In the distance, Lightning can hear the roar of engines and the squealing of brakes as their pursuers zero in on them. There's no doubt in his mind they'll find this alley unless he gives them someone to chase. It's only a matter of time.

Storm swears. Mutters the expletive equivalent of "Ray's going to scrap me." Then he says, "This is all your fault, McQueen."

It's really not. Again, it's hard to have sympathy for Storm.

 _But you're just letting yourself hate him_ , Lightning reminds himself. Lightning loves racing more than he hates Storm, and he needs Storm to know why. He needs Storm to have a fighting chance at learning what racing really is. Maybe he doesn't know what Storm's deal is - what the harrowing, precarious life of a Next-Gen is, or whatever. Maybe he doesn't even know himself. But this much he knows is true. Storm's gonna race.

"Don't move," he orders.

Storm's eyes widen, the whites of his eyes catching the moonlight. He bristles at Lightning's sudden authoritarianism.

"Shut up," Lightning preempts. "Don't move, keep quiet. And when the coast is clear, call Gale and have her come get you. Did you hear me? _Don't move."_

Lightning's attention flashes to the sound of the approaching engines. The sound dances up the tall, dense streets of Los Angeles, all condo and concrete, throws it like a wrecking ball. He starts his engine. As long as he gets moving, they won't be able to trace the sound back here.

They already want him. It shouldn't be that hard to tease a chance at a taste.

"You're insane," says Storm, when he realizes what Lightning's about to do. "They're gonna eat you alive."

"Well, they'll have to catch me first!"

"Yeah. Exactly. They're gonna eat you alive," Storm repeats. "Forget getting arrested. They're gonna catch you way before the cops show up. Then the cops are gonna take your pile of ball bearings, shove them in a cold case locker, and no one's ever gonna hear from you again."

"Call Gale," says Lightning, and feathers the gas to the end of the alley. He peeks around the corner and tries to put Storm's gruesome presentiments out of his mind.

"Hey, champ," Storm calls out, after a beat of hesitation.

"What now?"

Storm folds himself back into the line of street-parked cars and disappears behind a snoring GMC. "When they catch you - " he starts. "When they catch you, even if they offer - or if they try to make you - Don't… inject anything. Okay?"

Lightning glares hard at the GMC, in hopes that the heat of his glare might pierce through it, and second-guesses any compassion he'd even dreamed of bestowing on Storm.

"How stupid do you think I am?" he whispers incredulously.

But he knows better than to wait for a response.


	9. Chapter 9

Lightning stifles his yelp, because knowing his luck he's still well within earshot of Storm.

But it hurts. Not a lot, but enough.

It's the kind of hurt that'll drop you from a Top 5 car to a Top 15. 20 if running only makes it worse. It's familiar pain, at least, if there's any solace in that - though when you're racing you're so adrenaline-hot you don't typically feel much of anything. Similarly, the pain hadn't been able to catch him when he and Storm had torn down Baxter.

But then they'd stopped, and it had found him, and it's now here to stay. For the first block and a half, it's all he can think about.

Then Lightning remembers what he's running away from. He's whipping past buildings and street signs too quickly to have any hope of navigating his way to safety, and there's enough intersecting broadways cutting through the city grid that he's honestly not sure whether he's still rushing away from Storm and Baxter Street, or back towards them. _Run. Run run runrunrun -_

He hits a spray of glass and his front tires kick up a hunk of asphalt that rattles all the way down his undercarriage, caught in a frenzied tumble between him and the road. That kind of hurts, too.

 _Calm down._

But that's stupid advice, he tells himself, irate, and he does not calm down. He can't.

Yes, he can. He got Storm out of the picture. Storm's gonna call Gale, and she'll come pick him up, and that will be fine. And Lightning will handle the street gang. It's only an entire chop shop, supercharged and outnumbering him something like twenty-to-one. It's fine.

It's not fine.

He slams his brakes around a hairpin, a little too late. Scrapes his way down a median until he can peel himself away from the wall. An idiot designed this city. The streets all seem so random, and he's pretty sure it's not just that it's not an oval. It's all alien, and the roads have no rhythm to speak of. It's like a bunch of different cities piled up on top of each other, not caring where the old roads led or whether the new ones should join with them. And as usual, he doesn't know where the Interstate is.

What Lightning does know, he can only settle grimly into. _Don't panic,_ he reminds himself. If he turns this into a game, then he can win it. He just needs to stop worrying about being eaten alive. That's all.

 _It's just life and death. Don't overthink things!_

What he'd like to do is holler his way down Hollywood Boulevard (not that he'd know where _that_ was), because if that's not your response to life and death situations he's not sure what your problem is. ("Sally always said it came down to my overzealous sense of my own infallibility," says the Mater in Lightning's head. Lightning had just blinked at him, back then. Mater had blinked back.)

He slams his brakes again, as he careens toward a chain-link fence he hadn't seen until his headlights hit it just right. He gasps as his weight heaves forward and whatever he'd damaged back on Baxter keens under the stress of it - control arm, maybe; a bent strut. Sway bar?

 _Think positive!_ he mentally shouts at himself.

No.

Whatever his damage, it'll do him in well before his brakes go out. Doesn't matter how hard he's riding them. And if he puts himself into a wall, it won't be because he didn't see it. Against his will his suspension bucks left, and he has to fight to keep his line. Not good.

Lightning's not sure when he learned to think like that. Looking ahead to things like limiting factors. You'd think it'd be the crash, but he knows it's not. It's not even because of Storm, the Next-Gens, that whole fiasco. Lightning can't quite trace it. 'Limiting factor' sounds bleak, but there's been more races won by holding scrap together than anything of elegance; Lightning's own playbook could show the world a few. And there's more than a few in racing who'd call it smart to know your limits. To use that knowledge to your best advantage.

Doc had been one of those few. "And if it's the last thing I do, you will be, too," he'd said.

"Right. Smart!" Lightning remembers himself saying. "All grown up and paranoid."

It hadn't made much sense then, but Lightning supposes at some point down the line, Doc had succeeded. Maybe he'd even seen it in Lightning with his own eyes. That would have been a long time ago. Hundreds of races ago. Doc-was-still-alive-ago. When Lightning puts it that way, it makes his career feel pretty long. No wonder he'd forgotten the lesson.

Because they're right, you know. What the radio used to say about that crash - what he'd heard them say for four months straight. It _was_ his fault. You can't help crashing, mostly. If you can, you don't crash. You can't help crashing bad. Mostly. But he'd -

It doesn't matter. That's all past now. But Lightning knows part of that had been his fault, and it had been a long time coming.

This, on the other hand. This is going to be short.

Lightning spirals out of his memories.

His favorite street gang must've spotted him a couple blocks ago, because they're catching up quick. Bottom line, they know these streets and Lightning doesn't. Every corner eats at Lightning's distance buffer like he's purposely stopping to feed them lunch. Every corner, he takes blind, and he can guess, and hope, and do his wild best - brake late, brake hard, push the apex, and throw as much power at it as you can, as soon as you can - but whoever's behind him, _everyone_ behind him - their lines are cleaner every time.

Not to mention the city's crooked, compressed. It feels like a prison and there's not enough space out here to hit the kind of speed that comes easy to him. Given him a chance to go 180 free and clear, and Lightning could see himself turning this around. But what he's made for is not what this city is made for. Truth be told, running under his curve like this is starting to make him feel a little ill, which is not what he needs on top of this suspension issue. Play by play, this is exactly how his nightmares go. The kind where you run and run but you can't ever run fast - because you're asleep, and outside of your head, your body is heavy and still. But he's not asleep tonight.

 _You knew that, McQueen. You knew the second you left that alley, this is exactly how this was going to go. You knew -_

For a split second, Lightning just wants to cut the gas and give in. Let go. Let the pain throb instead of stab. Maybe throw up on someone's custom rims. It just - lately it feels like no matter what he does, this is how the story goes. Deep down, he knows it's over. It's stupid to act like it's not.

 _So give up, then._

Then they're on him, and that's the last thing he'd ever do. Lightning bears down and executes his first perfect corner of the evening. It's instinctive; when someone's on you like that, you find your absolute. There is no giving up.

Of course, the guy running his left corners perfect too, and Lightning stays caught. It's a Camaro-young, loud. Guys like Storm you don't hear coming, but this kid - yes, yes you do. When they hit the straightaway the blur of red beside him rises as the power of the kid's own acceleration lifts him from the ground. There's someone behind him, too - also loud. Growling the way Detroit muscle does when it comes calling. The old-school kind.

The stoplights are all out down this stretch - streetlights, too. The only illumination is their dance of headlights and the dull orange haze of the city skyline. Either it's a very serendipitous power outage or he's exactly where they want him. It would explain the lack of traffic. Lightning was never escaping; only delaying.

They're not trying to wreck him, though. Not even this spitfire Camaro. When Lightning wobbles, momentarily betrayed by his suspension before he can wrest it back under control, the Camaro overcorrects; he swerves well out of the way and nearly onto the curb. There's that.

And there's this: He's the racecar here, Lightning reminds himself. He's probably got more experience pushing, and being pushed, at 200 miles an hour than all of them combined. They don't want to wreck. They don't want him wrecked. Lightning, on the other hand, just wants out. No holds barred. It doesn't matter how rough this gang plays - you play rougher when everyone's got a roll cage; when you're built for this; when this is your purpose. This is the reason you're here. And if you're not gonna act like it, the other guy will.

Lightning decides that he didn't dodge boat anchors and V8s and stampeding tractors and the twisted gnarl of forests under moonlight just to get chopped up here.

He throws himself at the Camaro. The Camaro leaps out of the way, and Lightning's vision bursts white as all his weight dumps onto his injured front _it hurts it hurts it hurts_ but he drops a gear as he tumbles blindly left and lets his back spin out. Countersteers and locks into the slide. Rides Los Angeles like a carousel, 180 degrees. The Camaro can't begin to react.

Lightning's rears leave thick smoke in his wake, which turns into a thick white wall when his headlights hit it, but soon enough he's face to face with the rest of the gang, swerving through them as he and they burst through opposite sides of the smoke bank, like ghosts through the veil. It's pandemonium as gang tries to figure out whether they should be charging or dodging him. Lightning doesn't ever stop moving.

 _You are going the wrong way,_ tinkled a computerized voice at the back of his mind.

Then he's through.

There's enough of them that it'll be a jigsaw puzzle trying to get all of them to pull that U. He's won himself a second or so. Lightning clenches his jaw and tucks low to the ground, blinking stars to the corners of his vision. He drives toward light.

But his freedom is short-lived. In maintaining his idiotic hope that there will be a luminous green sign somewhere above him, an onramp for the 5, the 10, _anything_ , he almost doesn't see her.

"Hey!" she shouts, and his focus falls from the sky and back to the road and his brakes shriek as he comes to a serpentine stop before her.

"You!" he gasps. She's tiny, her engine a whisper in the middle of the street. A straggler of the street gang - one last car between him and freedom. She seems even tinier out here, beyond the close-knit safety of the Ramirez family's backyard, but it's definitely her. Cruz's cousin - the drag racer.

"Fura," says a gravelly voice behind him. _Fura._ Yes, that's her name. Lightning doesn't want to turn around. He shouldn't have stopped. Now he's surrounded and he's lost his momentum. Half the gang can probably out-accelerate him. It's over.

"You! You're - You're with - ?!" he sputters.

"You should've stayed at the house," she says. She has the decency to sound almost sad. "Didn't mi prima hermosa tell you? It's dangerous at night. Alone."

"She's right, you know," says the voice behind him. "You should let us put you up."

Slowly, Lightning reverses in a crescent, Fura to one flank and the voice to the other. It's the first time Lightning's seen the guy, not blinded by headlights or smoke or panic.

Charger with a blower. A muscular, no-nonsense bullet of sheet metal. If he'd been a Chevy, he'd be one of Ramone's most challenging kinds of customer. _Only thing worth painting true black is a classic like that,_ Ramone always said. _Sometimes the body does the talking and the paint just gotta listen._

"What do you want from me?" Lightning asks. His throat feels like sandpaper.

"I think you know," says the Charger.

"You want to race? Is that why you're running with them?" Lightning asks of Fura.

"She ain't who you should be talking to right now," says another - a Mitsubishi Eclipse, idling close to the Charger's fenders.

Lightning catches sight of his red Camaro friend in the wall of cars boxing him in. For all that this is looking increasingly like a triumphant moment for them - LA, 1, Lightning 0 - the Camaro doesn't seem excited. He's hanging back. A lot of them are, actually. The rest, flushing closer, look hungry.

Oh.

Oh, Lightning realizes. There must be a pecking order, and there's not enough of him to go around. That's grim.

If this were one of Mater's crazy stories, Lighting could probably use that. Convince them to duke it out amongst themselves, Thunder Hollow-style. But because this is real life, Lightning's mind goes utterly blank.

"Tell Cruz I'm sorry," says Lightning.

It's over, it's over, it's over.

He's not sure if he means it. Maybe he's trying to guilt Fura into defecting, going turncoat as his microcar in shining armor. He doesn't even know if he really thinks he's going to die. Die, or live some mute, crippled existence in a box under a bridge somewhere, nothing but ball bearings and some busted springs, clinging to sapience - because these days he's that kind of lucky. It seems like that's what's about to happen. But it's like his brain short-circuits. He can't imagine it.

When he'd crashed, he'd blacked out long before his body stopped tumbling, let alone thought about dying. He thought he'd missed the existential crisis. Turns out that even conscious, it doesn't feel that different. It's all just blank.

He is sorry, though.

"Um, excuse us, but you're blocking the intersection."

Fura's eyes widen, and the Charger's brow furrows, and a drab, bronze, bespectacled Impala pushes his way through the street gang. What appears to be his wife - a Caprice - smiles at them.

"Maybe undertake your nefarious activities somewhere more private?" she suggests cheerily. "This is a municipal crossroads. Cars need to be able to use it."

Lightning, his mind still a blank - albeit an increasingly puzzled one - doesn't know how to react to this.

"You get in the middle of this, gramps, and you'll be the one on blocks," threatens the red Camaro, when no one else says anything.

"First of all, I'm a 2002, and no one's grandpa," says the Impala. "Second of all - "

The Impala's grille lights up, red blue red blue. So does the Caprice's. And suddenly, the roads are stuffed with red and blue, and the roar of harried engines as the gang attempts to scatter. Fura's gone before Lightning even realizes what's happening. The Charger, caught out in the middle, doesn't do his image the disservice of attempting to flee. The mouthy Camaro gets booted. So do a few of the others.

"You're supposed to be on the other side of your jurisdiction. Ain't there a robbery or something goin' down?" the Charger intones, deadpan as the plainclothes Impala boots him, too.

"Oh, different division," the Impala clarifies. "We're not beat cops. I'm Lieutenant Schifrin - that's Sergeant BelAir."

The Caprice - Sergeant BelAir, apparently - waves a tire. "We're the Environmental Protection Unit," she finishes. "We can still arrest you for the street racing, though."

She pulses toward Lighting. "But mainly, you're under arrest for your violation of the Clean Air Act. Your guest tracker's been pinging our server for almost an hour! That's how we found you. Do you have any idea how many pounds of carbon you're over your emissions cap?"

"Um. No?" Lightning replies dazedly. He doesn't really see her. It's all white, white nothingness and the heavy thunk of a boot slapping onto his right front tire.

 _What. Is. Happening?!_

"Oh, and the illegal street racing, too. You're also under arrest for that," says Sergeant BelAir. "Also, the city's going to issue you a fine for that median you damaged."

"I'm sorry, what?" Lightning asks.

"Don't be embarrassed. Cars run into that thing all the time," Sergeant BelAir assures him. "Think they're gonna _Fast and Furious_ it, but don't know how to corner at speed."

 _'Don't know_ how _' to - ?! What?_

Lightning glances at the Charger, whose expression is impassive. Then the Charger narrows his eyes, until his lids eclipse the reflections of the lights and what's staring back at Lightning are pools of dead, black enmity. All he says is, " _You._ "


End file.
